


Sacraments and Cigarettes

by indigostohelit



Category: American Idiot - Green Day/Armstrong
Genre: Addiction, American Dream - Freeform, Cigarettes, Commercials, Drug Use, F/M, Heroin, Knives, M/M, Makeup, Needles, Scars, September 11 Attacks, Suicide, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 08:51:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He paints your eyes with glitter and glamour, lets you wake up in the morning to new scars and an empty bed, fucks you over so hard you’re still aching days later. In the half-light of a fire in an alleyway trashcan his throat glimmers red, white and blue, and sometime later that night, he tosses a razorblade in the air and doesn’t wait for it to come down. She applies makeup like war paint; or maybe she always did, and you just never noticed. You were never all that good at growing up, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacraments and Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> I would seriously advise you to take a good luck at the tags on this fic; it contains drug use, suicide, addiction, the September 11 attacks, and knives. If any of those are things that trigger you, it would probably be best for you to turn back now.
> 
> If, on the other hand, you are not triggered by these things, I would like to thank you wholeheartedly for reading this story.

Your first memory of St. Jimmy is licking your come off his pale, long-fingered hand; in retrospect, maybe that should have told you something.

Towards the height of it all, when your arm’s not yet totally scarred and your heart is only shaded in with black and red, he’s in your lap, grinding against you, his tongue in your mouth, his hands in your hair. He pulls back and licks a stripe along your cheek, whispers into your ear, “Does she know about me?”

Of course she knows he exists; that’s not what he’s asking. You hiss, gasp, and tell him, “Yes,” of course she knows about him, she knows you well enough to let you do this, be this.

He slides off your lap and into a huddled pile on the floor. You gape at him, your cock throbbing. “What the fuck? What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he says, gets up like a cat, ducks out through the door that leads to your fire escape. He sits on the edge, his long black-clad legs kicking out over the endless drop. You want to tell him to get back here but can’t quite manage it; instead you slink into the bathroom like a kicked puppy and jerk off to her hips and her fishnets and the look in her eyes when she smiles at you.

He sucks your cock like he’s got something to prove; maybe he does, Jesus. (No, the other one.) He paints your eyes in glitter and glamour, unless that’s his own face in the mirror. He rakes long lines down your thighs, lets you wake up in the morning to new scars and an empty bed, fucks you over so hard you’re still aching days later. In the half-light of a fire in an alleyway trashcan his throat glimmers red, white and blue, and sometime later that night, he tosses a razorblade in the air and doesn’t wait for it to come down.

You write,  _Dear Mom_ , on a night when the city lights are so dim you can almost see the stars, and then stop. No one’s been in the apartment since yesterday; there’s a bra hooked on one of your dresser drawers, and a used needle on the windowsill. The door to the fire escape’s still open, a chill wind whistling through, and you shiver. The place smells like sweat and sex and humidity; maybe it’s time for a change, but you were never all that good at that.

You grab the remote, flip on the TV, flop out on the couch, and it’s almost like old times: FOX USA CNN KNBR  _the_ Sports and Business Leader, yesterday the President, of course this impacts the election cycle, until September 10 we re _peat_ this exclusive product is only available until—

You were never all that good at growing up, either.

St. Jimmy kisses you wet, dirty, one hand raking down your back, the other shoved in between your legs. You thrust up into him, frantic, desperate; he bites you, shoves you down, jams a needle into your arm, and you thrash on the bed and kick your legs and scream hate and cigarette smoke and red-white-and-blue into the air and can't tell the difference.

Your second memory of St. Jimmy is a hand at your throat. You panic for a split second, but he’s drawing the blanket up around your shoulders, tucking you in, and his eyes are like a tigers'. He kisses you; it’s soft, quick, and you’d say it was sweet if St. Jimmy sweet wasn’t Lucky Charms and Pixie Stix, Dr. Pepper doling out the Novocain, and whatever it is, the last thing you feel is the press of his fingernails on your cheek, like air. No, better.

Towards the end, she applies makeup like war paint; or maybe she always did, and you just never noticed. St. Jimmy steals her lipstick from your bedside dresser, smears it over his own mouth haphazardly so it trails off at the edges like wildfire, blots his lips on yours.

He’s inside your veins, then, hot and sharp, a lighter and a needle and a knife pressed against your wrist, a hair away from drawing blood; you watch his hand twitch, fascinated, and almost want him to do it. He holds a needle to a flame and watches it dance, dips the red-hot line of light into India ink, and before you can breathe sinks it into his arm, a burning tattoo, another scar.

Inside your blood you fly across the country, fall into nothingness; outside you fuck her, and she rides you until you're gasping, comes, wraps her arms around you and hums lullabies in another language into your ear. The moon's heavy and red in the window, too fucked-up to be natural white, and you lie with your eyes wide and staring in the electric darkness.

The word for it's _hunger._ Takes you long enough to realize. You're hungry all the time these days, not in your belly but in the highways of your blood, and it spreads to your heart like cancer. St. Jimmy seems to be farther and farther away now; you think you see him on the sidewalk by your apartment one night, plucking out a melody on a guitar, looking as if his candy heart's broken, and it frightens you, and you don't know why.

You feel a touch on your arm and look away, and she smiles at you for the first time in a week, and pulls you back to bed. Later, when you light up a cigarette and go out to the fire escape to smoke, he's gone. You miss him, suddenly, like you miss air. No, worse.

He presses you up against the side of a grimy alleyway the next day and shoves a hand up your shirt, pins you to the wall with the other so you can't get away. You melt into his grip, rock against him like it's the end of the world, and he palms your cock through your ratty jeans and sinks to his knees. When he sucks you off you clench your fists, gasp, blink, do all you can to hold onto some semblance of sanity; he digs his nails into your leg and pulls back long enough to say, "No."

After you've come into his mouth, he wraps an arm around your shoulders, rubs his head against yours like a fucking cat, and whispers into your ear, "Does she know about me?"

Of course she knows he exists; some days you wish she didn't. You sigh, groan, and tell him, "No," because you've fucked her a thousand times, chased a thousand of her smiles, and even after it all you're still hungry, for the television and the advertisements and the sugar rush of being brain-dead, for the lies on the news networks and the lies in the cartoons and the lies in the reality shows, for his glamour and sharp-as-knives nails and Novocain, and you know you shouldn't be, and you're hungry anyway.

He covers your body with his own and kisses you, wet and dirty and hot and painful. He tastes like cigarette smoke, and she tastes like the cigarette she just smoked; there's a difference there, and it hurts.

You're not surprised when she leaves you, but it hurts anyway, like a piece of the world got ripped out, and when St. Jimmy shows up with a six-pack and needles and glitter you shut the door in his fucking face—and God, then it just hurts _worse._

Weeks later, it's almost the middle of September, and part of the television skyline is missing. She calls, and you don't pick up; he stands at the bottom of your fire escape, and you don't go to the window. You turn the television off, turn it on, off, on; you've never been all that good at growing up, Jesus. (No, the other one. You hope. God, you hope.)

So that's probably why St. Jimmy shoots his own brains out the next week. You watch the leftover needles in your apartment dissolve into glitter, like fairy gold, and can't really say you're all that surprised. It hurts, though, like the scars on your arms, and you stuff yourself into a suit and cut your hair and go get a job in a cubicle like the rest of the country—and God, then it just hurts _worse._

So you sit on a trashcan in a grimy alleyway and light up a cigarette, blow the smoke out in two ashen streams. You're not lost, and you're not beat, but you're getting there. Maybe that's good enough; you can't really bring yourself to care any more whether or not history cares. For now, you just blow smoke out in two long streams, miss things you never had, count old scars until the bus comes.


End file.
